Page 118 of The Lodge

One night a few months ago, when I was at Tyler’s place for dinner, he pulled out a stack of paper.

“What’s this?” I said, eyeing the familiar logo at the top, thinking surely it couldn’t be what it looked like.

But it was.

“I’ve been talking with Maribel,” Tyler told me. “She asked if I might want to do a book like Sebastian’s—and I told her yes this morning. I’m thinking I’ll make a companion album to go with it.”

Finally,finally, Tyler would get a chance to tell his story to the world.

Sure, the whole world knew the basics by that point—that he’d made himself disappear, only to resurface at the lodge eight years later. And Sebastian’s book goes into slightly more detail, but mostly as it relates to Sebastian, not Tyler.

To have the opportunity to tell the why behind everything that happened, not just the what—it’s something Tyler wants to do, he told me. Something heneedsto do.

And he’s writing every word himself.

“I love it,” I told him that night he broke the news. “I can’t wait until we can tell people about it.”

The waiting ends today.

Maribel and I listen as Tyler rehearses the song he’ll be playing this evening. It’s good—verygood. He had nearly a decade’s worth of songs to choose from; he never stopped writing after leaving True North. This time around, he’ll get to release music on his own terms.

My phone vibrates in my pocket: it’s Chloe.

We’re here!!!!!!! Ohmygosh, Alix, your name is on the friggin MARQUEE!!! Do not let me leave without us getting a photo with it

Once my name became inextricably linked with Jett Beckett’s all over the internet, our publicity team thought it might actually be good to play up my part in creating the book. Hence: my name is on the marquee right under Sebastian’s.

YESSS, I write back.I’ll come around to make sure you get inside okay!

Security has been instructed to keep the doors closed—people have been lined up on the sidewalk since six a.m.—but Chloe, River, Julie, and Julie’s husband, Justin, are all on the VIP list along with Lauren and Ian and my parents.

We find each other in the grand foyer, a space that stretches four stories tall and is every bit as opulent as the rest of the theater. Chloe gives me the most enthusiastic hug on the planet; we haven’t seen each other in weeks.

Over Chloe’s shoulder, I see River, along with Julie and Justin—and Grace, the tiny baby girl in Julie’s arms.

“She’ll probably wake up right in the middle of your talk,” Julie says, a callback to a running joke we have about Grace always interrupting at the most inconvenient times, starting with Julie’s water breaking two minutes after we arrived at a restaurant to celebrate Tyler’s book deal.

I’ve gotten to know Justin and Julie well over the last year.

That fateful, chaotic day—the day our collective secrets exploded for the world to see—had blurred into an exhausted, emotionally electric night. In the aftermath of Tyler resurfacing and the subsequent viral social media posts, Tyler and I went back to his place for some much-needed alone time. Our room service delivery had just arrived when I got an email from my landlord: an eviction notice. The damage caused by Lauren’s coworker was the final blow after all the noise complaints.

The next morning, I found Julie outside my door. She wasn’t wearing her usual concierge uniform—just light-wash jeans, ripped at the thighs, and a Fair Isle sweater so big it swallowed her. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was already twelve weeks pregnant.

“Tyler told me about your apartment,” she said. “I’ve been thinking: long-distance relationships can be really hard—and it’s been so good to see Tyler finally let someone in.” Her smile waswarm. “River and I talked things over. We won’t be hosting any more guests in this penthouse now that Tyler’s news is out in the open, so—if you’d like to stick around for a bit—we’d love for you to stay.”

So I did.

Over the last eight months, Tyler and I have spent countless late nights and early mornings—and every other part of the day—at either his penthouse or mine. River suggested we tear out some walls and transform our homes into a single living space, so that’s exactly what we’ll be doing as soon as the book tour ends. He and Tyler have grown closer than ever now that they’ve worked through years’ worth of things that had gone unsaid—a friendship tested by fire that’s only come out stronger.

“Youcanhelp pay for the renovation,” Tyler had told me one night, when he found me working out numbers on a spreadsheet, “but please know you don’t have to.”

I stood my ground until he showed me the numbers in his old bank accounts—the ones from his True North days, which would have gone dormant from inactivity years ago had he not continued to receive regular royalties from all the book and merch deals True North had accumulated at the height of their fame.

It was… an extraordinary amount of money. Like, astronomical.

It gave me a new appreciation for all he’d walked away from when he left the band—and for his discipline all these years, his commitment to keeping a low profile.

Chloe takes my hand and gives it a squeeze, pulling me out of my head.

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